


tonight, i've fallen

by heart_of_ice



Category: Scorpion (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, how 2x07 went down in my head
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-11 01:40:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5609056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heart_of_ice/pseuds/heart_of_ice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Toby's first boxing match and 'I hate you' and 'No, you don't'</p>
            </blockquote>





	tonight, i've fallen

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by happy being emotional. because happy being emotional will be my downfall.
> 
> i don't own scorpion.

Another hit. To his left side, yet it’s her whose left side feels the ache. The whole team is watching on, eyes trained on Toby and his opponent circling in the ring. Toby lands a hook on his opponent’s jaw but, like a brick wall, seems unfazed by the hit. Paige and Walter to her left are watching with guarded worry while Sly on her right has not opened his eyes since the match began. Toby takes another hit, to the jaw. Gallo is screaming at him to keep his fists up. She grits her teeth. 

 

When the bell goes for the end of the round, she gets up. Paige is calling after her, asking _what’s wrong, where are you going_. But she keeps walking, until she reaches the entrance to the pit. The man at the door is telling her that once she goes out, she can’t come back in. And she reckons, she can pick the lock in 3 seconds, but she doesn’t argue and finds a nice, uncrowded wall to collect her thoughts. She watches Cabe talking to Toby, listens to his instructions through the comm in her ear. She repeats them to herself: keep your guard up; he comes forward, you step back; be quicker than he is; always keep your guard up. Always.

 

The round starts. Just two more to go. But already, just by watching Toby stand up from the seat, that he won’t make it to that last round, if he makes it through this one at all. His stance is clumsy - the ten year olds at her last orphanage could’ve knocked him off his feet with a single push. She stands straighter against the wall, keeping her gaze on Toby. If he could just get one good hit on his opponent, somewhere only his medical brain would know, to knock him out before it’s him on the ground. Just one good hit. 

 

Then time slows down. One hit to Toby’s jaw and he’s down on all fours. The referee is holding back the other fighter, who’s soaking in the cheers of the crowd. Cabe is leaning into the ring, speaking to Toby. But she can’t tear her eyes away from the sight of Toby defenceless on the ground, because over the sound of Cabe in her ear, above the noise of the crowd, a ‘ _Happy_ ’ comes through the comms. It catches the attention of Paige, Walter and even Sly, who have turned around to look for her. She wants to meet their questioning looks, she wants to be strong. Another, ‘ _Happy_ ’ comes through, and against all of her instincts, she pushes through the crowd, knocks into Cabe’s side in her hurry. 

 

She wants to say, ‘I’m here. Toby, I’m _here.’_ Instead, her worry is overshadowed by the anger that he found himself in the ring in the first place so she spits out a stern, ‘Get up’, past the lump in her throat and blinks away the burning behind her eyes. 

 

‘Get up, Curtis.’ Not Toby, not even Doc. Curtis. ‘I said, get up, Curtis!’ she shouts angrily. It’s all she can do to not break, not here, not now, not ever. 

 

Cabe’s hand is on her shoulders, trying to calm her, and she doesn’t know how long she’s got until the referee starts the clock again. She smacks her hands on the mat, ‘Get up!’ and when he closes his eyes, she just repeats those same two words louder. Her vision blurs and she sees red drips on the ground. When she blinks again, she realises it’s just sweat. 

 

She knows that there are better people to be screaming at him but she can’t help herself. Something in her bones is urging her to urge him on. ‘Why won’t you get up! Stand up, Curtis. Stand up and fight!’ 

 

And he does, just as the referee is counting down from ten with his fingers. He does it slowly, but he’s standing up, and she’s watching him. When the next round begins, she turns away, shakes off Cabe’s hand from her shoulder, takes out the comm in her ear and walks out the front door. She waits in the van, in silence, for four minutes and 28 seconds. They come out the front door, Toby supported by Cabe alone which means that it couldn’t have been that bad. She turns on the engine while they file in the back. 

 

She drives them home in silence. She doesn’t ask any questions and nobody offers. She passes Sly, who’s sitting behind her, her comm, and in the rearview mirror, she sees everyone do the same. Nobody complains about her driving either, even when she chased down three orange lights. Every now and then, she looks at Toby in the rearview mirror where his head is resting on Paige’s lap. It’s always just a check to see if his chest is still rising and falling. 

 

But as the silence in the van stretches, the more her anger, frustration and fear rise to the surface. And she’s racing to the garage, even if it just means that she can get out of the van faster. She slams on the brakes and everybody lurches forward. 

 

‘Ah,’ Toby said softly, a hand pressed against his ribs. ‘Easy there, Happy.’

 

She jumps out and races into the garage. She can’t hear her name without hearing the weakness in Toby’s voice in her ear. She paces in the kitchen and watches as they file in. She moves forward, unsure of her intentions. Until Toby lays his gaze on her. 

 

‘Were you paying attention to my heroism? Could Chet last that long in a boxing match?’ 

 

One second she’s listening to him speak and the next, she’s running across the distance between them and shoving him back. Several hands shoot out at once - Paige and Sly reach out to stop Toby from falling, Walter is between her and Toby acting as a wall which leaves Cabe, who’s secured an arm around her waist which doesn’t seem to loosen as she lurches forward. 

 

‘I hate you!’ she shouts bitterly. He sways but he’s listening. 

 

‘No, you don’t,’ he says calmly. 

 

She’s so angry that everything is covered by a red hue, like someone’s put red sunglasses over her eyes. All she wants to do is beat some sense into Toby; she can’t bring herself to care that there’s a bruise starting to form on his cheek and that just minutes ago, he barely avoided a concussion. She wriggles out from Cabe’s arms, or tries to. 

 

‘Shut up, Curtis!’

 

‘Happy,’ he tries to say but all it does is bring her back beside the ring, watching sweat drip onto the mat, watching him struggle to stand.

 

‘Stop talking,’ she says slowly. She looks him in the eyes, and she holds him there better than he could hold his own in that stupid ring. ‘I hate that you try to one up Chet. I hate that you think being a fighter makes you a hero.’ Every time she blinks, all she can see is Toby on the ground and she hates that it reminds her that everybody who loves her, leaves. ‘I hate that you put yourself in that ring. You’re so selfish,’ she cries.

 

Cabe secures an arm around her arms and now all she is, is a pair of kicking legs, reaching towards Toby. 

 

‘What if you were injured? What if he knocked you out? It’s always about you, Doc,’ she spits out, blinking away the burning in her eyes. Cabe’s grip tightens. ‘It sucks seeing you get hurt. I hate seeing you get hurt. Why can’t you understand that?’ But she has suddenly has no energy to continue and she goes limp in Cabe’s arms. 

 

'Happy,' Toby whispers and he reaches out to touch her. But she backs up into Cabe and she looks away because her vision has blurred and her heart is in her stomach. 

 

A suffocating silence envelopes the garage. Then, Toby’s being ushered upstairs and Cabe’s putting her down on the sofa. She turns her back to Cabe, embarrassed that she let herself lose it like that, and calms herself enough that she can’t feel the lump in her throat every time she swallows. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> this is the first fic i'm publicly posting and i don't really know what i'm doing
> 
> or how this works so
> 
> thank you for reading! and have a good day :)


End file.
